“After discovering what appears to be a duplicate of the planet Earth, Captain Kirk and his landing party find a population ravaged by a strange disease, which only children appear to have survived”
You know when Kirk sees a nice looking woman and he gets that phony nice guy look on his face? Then he puts on this big charming guy act? I always referred to that as Kirk’s “Cute Captain” routine. Well let me tell you, the Cute Captain was in full effect in this episode. The disturbing thing is that he’s hitting on a 13 year old girl. In fact this entire episode is disturbing and full of holes, but it’s damn entertaining.
Miri is actually played by a 19 year old Kim Darby, who was excellent in the original True Grit … she had also been married twice by 1970. So basically, Kirk’s actually hitting on a woman that’s been around the block once or too many times. As the entire away crew begins to contract this deadly disease (that only affects adults) the children plot to kill them all. They capture Rand and lure Kirk into a schoolroom where they beat him with clubs and pipes … it’s actually a somewhat frightening scene. Kirk literally tosses some of these kids around like rag dolls which is funny, and he manages to rip his shirt for like the 5th time in 8 episodes.
I never noticed how much they use Yeoman Rand in season one, so far she has been in almost every episode and Uhura is barely in any. Either way, I can’t stand both characters. So anyway, these kids are the ugliest little things. If you combined the entire cast of the movie Freaks! into one hideous monster, it would be at least 10x cuter than these bogglins. And God are they friggin annoying. The leader boy looks like John C. Riley’s giant head on the body of a 12 year old and this other kid looks a Shetland Pony.
How is there an exact replica of Earth? Not only that, but they invented all of the same stuff, built the same looking structures, created the same language and they even had tricycles. I was expecting an explanation from Spock, but it never happened. What Spock did manage to discover is something that doesn’t make sense – he said that these children age “one month every hundred years” so they must be “well over 300 years old”. Seeing how many of them are at least 10, wouldn’t this make them thousands of years old?? I went back to the scene and he does indeed say this. Anyway, Kirk wins over the kids and McCoy discovers a cure. He nearly dies by testing the medicine on himself, but of course he survives. One thing that I failed to mention throughout these episodes is the awesome “back and forth” tension between Spock and McCoy. It seems like McCoy really hates aliens and Spock really hates McCoy. Very funny stuff. Anyway, in the end McCoy cures the children and Kirk calls Starfleet and has them send some teachers and whatever. Even though Miri is probably one of the worst TOS episodes I’d still give it a B.PS: I just read that most of those ugly kids had been played by the children of the actors (Shatner, Grace Lee Whitney etc). It’s hard to believe that Yeoman Rand is 81 years old.
ST TOS COUNTDOWN: 9 down 71 to go
5 comments:
"Kirk literally tosses some of these kids around like rag dolls"
I don't think you can preface a simile with the word "literally." But otherwise... good review.
Oh man--that kid _does_ remind me of John C. Reilly. That's funny stuff.
I don't think the kids were necessarily thousands of years old, though I forget exactly what was said. The disease may have hit only 100 years ago.
Out of all of my terrible writing examples, you pick that one!
You know, I didn't think of that. The virus I think did hit a few hundred years ago, so that does make sense I guess.
The guy in the photograph is the great character actor Michael J. Pollard. He was 27 years old at the time this episode was made. But he was always ugly.
Only a true talent can be 27 and pull off playing a pre-pubescent kid.
Post a Comment